If you've been buzzing about "Are You Really
My Friend?" the new installation of Facebook-inspired portraits by local
photographer and Bakery Photo Collective founder Tanja Alexia
Hollander, you're not alone. Any high-profile intersection between the
fine-art world and a massively influential populist medium is bound to
cause a stir.

Some excitement comes
from factors outside of Hollander's practice. One of the exhibit's major
draws is the totalizing cultural fluency of the language of Facebook —
even its most ardent detractors at least know how it works. Of course,
displaying hundreds of locals in the state's biggest art museum won't
lose you any friends either.

If one
of these factors may have drawn you to the show, be careful it doesn't
obscure Hollander's true brilliance. Her eye has been praised in these
pages often enough; the active ingredient here is the conceptual design.
Down the long corridor of the museum's crannied fourth floor, Hollander
has arranged ten-by-ten-inch color portraits of her Facebook friends
(and their families, where applicable) according to display methods
borrowed from the digital world. Most are shown in a long horizontal
line, as if the photos of an online slide show were strung together.
Others backed with magnets adhere to a giant board, where users are
invited to drag-and-drop them as they wish. A couple others — most
notably the reverent, compositionally stunning portrait of local art
maven June Fitzpatrick — are larger and framed; to continue the analogy,
they're the exhibit's profile pictures.